


shed your skin on a whim (oh, be mine)

by theseourbodies



Series: girl club rules [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: DADT Repeal, F/F, F/M, Queer Themes, Sexuality is a spectrum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 13:10:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9550526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: Dark hair, light eyes, hard body--everybody knows what Cath likes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> when I was abroad, I met a bi girl who was in with the program to get away from a failed relationship with another woman that had hurt her badly. She said to me, "People say 'you like both genders equally' but that's not really it. being with a girl is _so different_ , so much more intense." 
> 
> She was right.

Somewhere between Billy’s cut jaw and Steve’s big, cocky smile, there’s Valentine, with her soft hair and soft skin and the razor-edged grin that Catherine never, never got to taste. Val (Lieutenant Mariah E. F. Valentine, chief comms officer, USS _Benfold_ , because she can talk about it now, say anything she _wants_ about it now,) with her hard convictions and her clean salute and a way of smiling out of the side of mouth at Cath when the light was just right so that anyone who noticed would brush it right off—women being women, soft looks, soft smiles. When Cath thinks about her now, almost all she remembers is that wide coral mouth and the way her eyes looked dark but caught the light at terrible, inopportune moments, catching Cath badly by surprise. It’d shaken her up like a pop bottle, left her out in the sun to bake and sweat and shake with tension until Val had taken matters into her own hands, taken _Catherine_ into her own hands. Cath was on the _Benfold_ for almost four years, and in the first two Val puts her mouth on every inch of her skin, it feels like, except her mouth.

Catherine doesn’t think to wonder about it until after she’s screwed up the courage to ask Val if she maybe wants to come back to Texas, back home with her, on their next scheduled leave. Val had said a lot after that—she hadn’t been angry, but for all she said she would if she could, she never said yes, and Catherine gets the picture pretty quick. She gets over it, and when the little affair— _experiment, fling,_ whatever, Cath calls it a lot of things except what she thought it was at the time—comes to a winding end, she stops looking for promises where there aren’t any and gets good at smiling like a friend again.

It’s easier than she thought it would be, but she never really _forgets._

\---

Five months after the repeal, Cath gets the invitation, _Please join us_ printed in tasteful, deep blue. She strokes her thumb over the names _Mariah & Melody_ over and over again and before she really thinks about it she has her phone out, Steve’s number already pulled up. He doesn’t know Valentine, but he knows the way Cath had sounded in the cool dark, that weekend in Guam they had barely left the hotel bed, sharing little secrets and taking turns rolling on top of one another. Cath had laid out the rough outline of it for him, trying for casual and barely managing to not sound terrified; he’d pressed his face into her shoulder and petted her hip and started to say something three times before he settled on _Thank you._ He doesn’t know Val, but he knows the shape of her, of what she and Cath had been.

She’s fine, and her hands don’t shake when she pushes the call button, and she’s not crying but it’s a little hard to breath anyway, her throat’s a little tight. Steve picks up and his voice is warm and bright, _Hey, you, how’s it goin’_. She’s not crying but her breath is coming in huge, heaving gasps and Steve is suddenly hard and worried, talking and talking, and she’s _not crying_ but it’s so hard to talk and to breath and the tasteful blue letters on the creamy white cardstock get so blurry she can barely see them, she can’t read them at all. Steve is saying her name frantically in her ear, _Cath, Catherine,_ and she tells him, “I’m fine, I’m sorry, I’m fine, I’m fine,” except all she can seem to say is, “She never, she never, why didn’t she want to—.”

Steve doesn’t know Valentine, but he knows the shape of most of Catherine’s secrets like she knows most of his, and he shushes at her over the phone gently, whispers her name much more calmly than he had been, so she thinks he understands. Eventually, her breathing calms and her eyes clear, and she’s so much more calm. Steve murmurs _Cath, hey Cath_ and she lets it wash over her like the ocean waves. “Hey,” she says back, finally, listens to his short, relieved laugh. Steve says _I don’t know why, but she was crazy, absolutely insane,_ and Cath says, “Yeah. Yeah. I—I know.” She doesn’t say _I love you_ or _thank you,_ , because that’s not what they do, but she knows the shape of the smile she can hear in Steve’s voice even over the phone; she knows the way it feels against her mouth and the way he kisses her like he can’t believe it, sometimes, that he gets to do this, and she thinks, _Yeah. Yeah, ok,_ and tucks the invitation in a place of honor up on the pin board in her quarters. It’s not her victory, and that knowledge is bittersweet; but she loved Mariah Valentine and she likes her, too. She says _Lieutenant Commander Valentine and Mrs. Valentine_ to herself and her smile is genuine.

Steve says her name over the line, grinning, and Catherine grins, too, and she’s good. She’s good.

**Author's Note:**

> I am a queer girl, and as much as I appreciated seeing the DADT repeal/fallout become a pretty recurrent theme in H50 fic, I wanted to explore the theme in terms of someone other than Steve. 
> 
> Obviously I am not in the military; though this piece is very personal to me, I have very much an outsider's perspective of this issue. Please keep that in mind.


End file.
